Domus Insanorumque

Welcome to the gabble,
come on in and take a seat, 
your hairsplitting lobotomy awaits,
and the head nurse says, "so sorry, but this maison de sante doesn't
take the sane but enjoy the drug-soaked coffee 
it's free," and over in a far corner a pretty lady sings 
Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday" in a comatose stare,
then an old card magician told me to pick a card
from a tarot deck, downward I fell, 
what sickness dwells here in this devil's playground,
in another room, an old man holds a portrait of
Jesus, and praying to die, to be freed from this madhouse,
if the stench of stinking feces and drug-colored urine doesn't
overwhelm you, then you'll be escorted to the next floor,
where patients in straitjackets talk in parroted demonic voices,
those who work here among the sick surely succumb to 
the madness, I heard one restrained with a straitjacket talking
or speaking in glossolalia, very unnerving and unsettling, 
if my belief in a God didn't exist I surely hope for one now,  
this lurid insanity so neatly preserved and
kept in a secured medical file, every case of every patient
driven to their own maniacal abattoir, 
jailed in their contemptuous minds, 
reluctant to fight the demons that subdue the hollow
despairing asylum of their frail minds;
yet death is but another sedation,
welcome to the madhouse, we've been expecting you.

- John Hardesty 

Winter’s Gloom(Haiku)

This draping despair
and gloom followed me back home
and held me hostage.

- John Hardesty

Walking A Tightrope Over The Ohio River(pg. 3)

    After a dull Sunday afternoon of nothing, my ride finally showed up, Stingray had the coolest van in Kentucky, it had one marvelous customized paint job on the side panels with psychedelic purple that blended in with teal and blue, and his slogan that read over the teardrop-window: Cents and $$'s(Sense & Dollars). I jumped in the van and somebody had already taken the passenger's seat, so I flopped in the bucket seat in the back which was literally like sitting in a lazy boy recliner, and I heard immediately Journey's new album playing in Stingray's brand new Pioneer cassette stereo. Stingray turned the van around like Richard Petty and he was a great driver and he was one of the very few people for whom I could truly trust with my life enough that I could fall off to sleep and never worry about a thing. 
     " Hey Little Joe, this is Seager and Spencer," Stingray said introducing me to these complete strangers. 
     "Hey, what's up?" I said real quick like some idiot who was fishing for words without a fishing pole.
     Seager and Spencer were from Raywick and they both went to school with Stingray, and they all grew up together and knew each other's weird little idiosyncrasies. They all were unique and would expose all their peculiarities in due time, especially when you're all living together in a hotel room in some drifter's town outside the comfort of your own town. 
     "Hey, Spencer how long you been working on this bridge?" I studdered out trying to make a connection and a new friend.
     "Oh, 'bout 6 months," Spencer said with a deep country twangy voice.
     "Cool, so you're still a little green too?" I replied back.
     "I know how to keep away from the big shots and always act busy," he said laughing that even drew a chuckle from me.
     I then withdrew the conversation and sat back in the bucket seat and watched city after city's bucolic setting pass by like a passenger on a train. I always loved the small towns outside the big cities because they offered a more realistic chance for a small town boy like myself to become that dreamy somebody other than a yokel I projected. 

                                                                        3 

Walking A Tightrope Over The Ohio River(pg. 2)

     
     We always played cards in the back of Squire's Bar and Grill, a little hole in the wall place. I lost that night at cards and was more interested in the female persuasion than losing all my money that night so I got up from the poker table and left my dad to defend our honor in cards. I sat on the bar stool ordered a beer and was talking to an attractive gal when out of nowhere my cousin Stingray walked in and strolled up to the bar and ordered a 12-pack of Budweiser, and was headed out the door before I caught up to him. 
     "Hey, Cuz," I said to my cousin, who was about 30% Choctaw Indian from his mother's side, and his hair was long and black down to his waist, and you could tell he was proud of his Indian status, and he always wore his Clint Eastwood's The Good, Bad, and the Ugly poncho with his wild hair over it. 
    "Hey, Little Joe, what's going on, and what brings you to Raywick?" He said and the Raywickians always called me Little Joe, because I guess I acted like my dad.
     "I was playing cards with my dad, but hey, did you hear, I start working Monday with you guys? I said about as happy as I could ever be because I knew my cousin Stingray would always look after me. 
     "OK, cool, we leave early!" he said.
     "Oh yeah, can you pick me up, I'll give you gas money, twenty okay?" I said hoping he'd say yes because we were going to Ohio River's Milton-Madison bridge, and I haven't one clue getting there.
     "You got the cash now?" Stingray said. 
     "Here you go," as I handed him a crisp twenty. 
     "I'll pick you up at 5:00 on Sunday night," Stingray said, and before I could say a word he hurried out the door to his van loaded with women. 
     I sat back on the bar stool and thought I was the man with a plan now. I checked back on my dad who was doing alright too, and I told him, let's hit the road, he was reluctant but I ended up winning. We got into the truck and dad was a bit tipsy from drinking beer. He won about $800.00 but wasn't satisfied winning that much but he eventually piped down on our way home back to Bardstown that was twenty miles away. I didn't say one word the rest of the way home as I thought my destiny was set and my fare was paid. Now, all I had to do was wait on Sunday evening and that was two days away.
      

                                                                    2
     

Franz Liszt

In a time of solace and Romanticism 
ordained the great Franz Liszt, 
he was one of the greatest pianists of all time,
he lived among the greats of his time, including
Richard Wagner, Frederic Chopin, Robert Schumann,
Camille Saint-Saens, Mikhail Glinka, Hector Berlioz,
Ole Bull, Edvard Grieg, Alexander Borodin, and Joachim Raff;
Liszt was the Bavarian Hungarian, his exquisite genius
lain primarily with his power of hypnotism, 
his symphonic and polyphonic rhythms were
contributed by his octo-dactyl-hand-speed;
witnesses say he could stop charging horses in their tracks
while playing outdoors touring Europe, 
no one could master or match his feat of mysticism,
his generosity, after the Great Fire of Hamburg,
where the ambush of fire lasted three long days,
gave concerts in aid of the poor thousands of homeless there
in that hellish inferno;
yet, like all musicians the fraught of tragedy
cometh through the doorway of time
unprepared, unannounced, and always unwelcomed,
deaths of his son and daughter took away 
any glimpse of recovering his youth, Liszt took
his hiatus and shelter from the grueling stage
at Madonna del Rosario, just a few miles from Rome,
now, Abbe Liszt became an honorary canon of Albano;
he wandered from the monastery, back to Weimar, and 
toured Europe once again traveling by rail amassing over
4,000 miles a year during this period of his rebuttal fame;
though his metronome stopped on July 31, 1886. 

 - John Hardesty 

Walking A Tightrope Over The Ohio River(Short Story- pg. 1)

PROLOGUE: A true story of a greenhorn kid from Kentucky fresh out of high school who thought he was a man who had the heart of twenty lions with adolescent big dreams only to find out by cold hard reality that it took work. 

                            Walking A Tightrope Over The Ohio River 

     I finally graduated from high school in 1979 and between a Catholic upbringing of 7 long years being tortured by old penguins who ruled with their tiny fists and a wooden inch-ruler and 6 grueling years split between mid-school and high school I was ready. I couldn't believe I was going to be my own man. But, reality sat in and that was I had a job that only paid $4.35 an hour. My life was already in peril from the start but I had a car and motivation and that's all a kid at nineteen needed.

     I worked at a burger joint and it sucked, got old the very first day, so I quit and started to carry hod and brick, I was tough as a 16 penny nail, but hated carrying hod and brick 6 days a week for $5.00 an hour, and when I came home I was dead tired. So, one night I asked my dad if he could help me land a job like my cousin Stingray who made $12.00 an hour. He said he'd talk to the foreman who he knew very well and told me to keep my head up. I came in one Friday night flopped on the couch, and dad said, "I got some great news, you're hired!"

     "What, are you kidding me?" I said elated waiting on a confirmation.  

     "You start Monday, and you make $12.00 an hour," dad said smiling and winking at me.

     I jumped so high I hit my head on the ceiling in our basement and thought I'm rich, I'm going to be somebody. This was by far one of the happiest moments in my life. 

     "You want to go play cards with me tonight?" Dad said smiling.

     "Hell yes, and here's twenty bucks to open up on!" We left together in dad's old blue Chevrolet. I was glowing like November's full moon that night. 

                                                                         1

Lorelei's Echo

Harmony echoes silently-
   Unraveling and violently;
The music crescendo 
   Above the siren's seductive vocal. 

Madness consorts the fool,
   Playfully, she invokes her tool,
As she imbues her infinity,
   Matchless the insanity.

Luring and wicked
   Under a sordid thicket,
She harps the melodic tune
   So captive her subtle rune.

Compelling, you follow her haunting voice,
   With her venting musical croze,
So lovely her sirens deplore
   That leads thee upon her shore.

She taketh the heart for whom try to hold her,
   And blinds the innocent sailor,
Timeless his will, he shall surrender
   To the echoed beautiful siren forever. 

  - John Hardesty 

Civil War

Horrid haunts still stir about on the sacred lands of battle,
    Torrid thunder ravished the ides of the Civil War,
Plunder pummeling cannons leveled all ranked lines,
    Deadly, deafening awakenings stood smoke clouds,
Glistened gloom wore upon every face,
    Wretched worry clung to every wore-torn soldier,
Firing functionaries stood ground,
    Protesting pride shrugged from every jaw,
Shearing sibilation resounded in every ear,
    Jolting judgment was at hand,
Unblemished, unbent courage held domain,
    Lingering luminaries hailed in every corner,
Struggled strategy stood in folly,
    Consummated conquest lives in triumph,
Vindicated victory looms freedom.


  - John Hardesty 

Time(Haiku)

Time's allotted clicks
ticking, measuring our hours-
life's augmentation. 


- John Hardesty 

Between The Twain

Shall we ever meet again
between the twain
that separates the living and dying lanes
of what pertains
in that unknown domain
just remember, your love shall remain. 


- John Hardesty 

The Eternal Tale(Haiku)

An old tale retold
through enriched and embellished 
layers of fiction.



* Holy Bible



- John Hardesty 

Trip On A Clipper Ship

                                                           The interminable flight

                                                                to an exotic scene

                                                               the nocturnal light

                                                      of a wayfarer's heavenly dream.

                                                          Modern ramshackle Italy,

                                                                the ruins of Rome,

                                               upon the cobalt-blue Mediterranean Sea,

                                                                to Caesar's home.

                                                                Down the long Nile

                                                           into ageless unkept Egypt,

                                                to a towering and masterly cut stone-pile

                                                           where a pharaoh slept in a crypt.  

                                           

                                                             Peregrinate to China,

                                                             scale the Great Wall,

                                                            marvel wonder of Asia,

                                                          with its enormous stone mall.

                                                          

                                                            Sail to the Mayan city

                                                of Tikal, in northern Guatemala's hills

                                            with its beautiful courts and plazas of smithy, 

                                                           where life now stands still.

                                                            The interminable flight

                                                                to an exotic scene 

                                                                the nocturnal light

                                                       of a wayfarer's heavenly dream.

                                                                - John Hardesty 

                                                             

Warp Contrast

Pummeled reasoning,
conjured in flails of flames,
where gods play their mindless contests,
we sing songs of enslavement, 
praising with mockery,
reproached by the grid and gird of restraint, 
to civilize the normalcy of denial
and behesting to the adherence of madness,
this is where the fool separates duty from
obligation and rejects an unattainable barrier,
he's one abject useless energy,
a colorless ray of nothingness,
an empty atom,
lifeless antimatter,
ordinary baryonic matter,
benign quasar, 
an unharnessed starburst
strewn across the universe 
waiting for a spark from 
some quantum entanglement 
to become an unearthly supreme beacon
or some cosmic Frankenstein. 

- John Hardesty 

Humor # 29

When the Space Age cometh...
Will all Amish farmers customize their spaceships with wagon wheels?

- John Hardesty